Another great piece from Jalopnik.

  • RedditWanderer@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    56
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    The site found that despite millions being invested in cycling infrastructure across America, the number of people regularly riding to work has fallen by 75,000 compared with pre-pandemic levels.

    This is such bullshit. If you follow the links it does lead to a number or even a lot of investment. Some cities improving stuff but they are also counting people buying e-bikes, and entire cities buying bike fleets. You can spend billions on buying bikes if you want, that’s not “infrastructure”.

    “Millions” across the US is a laughable investment. European cities individually spend more than that, because it’s cheaper than maintaining roads for cars, adding more lanes of highways, and climate change.

    I bet you the amount of money being poured into new highways is 100x was is being done for bikes.

    • njordomir@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      18
      ·
      1 year ago

      I latched onto the same stat, but for a different reason. What percentage of those 75,000 don’t ride to work because they are now working from home?

      I don’t ride to work anymore, but I put in more miles than ever. 30 miles round trip to grab a beer with a friend on Saturday afternoon, hell yeah! Sometimes I go out on my lunch breaks to wake up and re-energize myself.

    • Nouveau_Burnswick@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I bet you the amount of money being poured into new highways is 100x was is being done for bikes.

      You’re a orders of magnitude off. Let’s assume “millions” means 10 million. I’m also going to generously assume 10 million per year, rather than the more likely 10 million over a couple years.

      With those figures highway and street spending is 13,000 more.

      Edit: I just reread and saw NEW construction. I don’t have that figure.

      Edit 2: on secons look, that 130 $bn spending nust be new roads; that looks like insufficient maintaince for the 161,000 mi of highways in the USA, let alone all other roads.

    • CADmonkey@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Indeed. How much money per mile of 4-lane stroad with a center turn lane? Is it a million dollars a mile?